This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

“The brassiere turns 100 years old this week — and so does everyone who still calls it a brassiere.” More ba-bum.

Seth Meyers may have started on shaky ground, but he made up for it halfway through his first show as host of "Late Night" with guests Amy Poehler and U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden.
(Peter Kramer / GETTY IMAGES)

Cue the Weekend Update smirk of condescension from Meyers so that everyone can laugh.

Make no mistake: Meyers is the best man for a difficult job — a sharper edged Jimmy Fallon who in his earlier role as the head writer of Saturday Night Live proved to be a pointed satirist, especially with political material.

But it will take time — as proven with fellow Late Night hosts Conan O’Brien and Fallon — to get the butterflies out, the timing nailed down.

Meyers replaces Fallon on the 12:35 p.m. show, even as Fallon moved last week to the plum Tonight Show spot, the final domino in the late-night game of musical hosting chairs.

And people are watching. Meyers recorded the highest rating for a Late Night overnight for a Monday since 2005. That was when NBC had to reach back to past glory with a Johnny Carson tribute show.

And even though he may have started on shaky ground, Meyers made up for it halfway through the show with first guests that included SNL Weekend Update colleague Amy Poehler and U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden.

“Amy really helped me with the Secret Service,” said Biden, who was a guest on Poehler’s Parks and Recreation and could have hosted his own reality show about nutty VPs, if they hadn’t already made Veep.

Biden said Poehler ended up grabbing one of his secret-service agents by the lapels, saying aggressively: “You take care of him!”

Meyers’ comfort level seemed to improve as he progressed, including deftly telling a personal story about how someone ended up changing his car tire for him and his wife because he couldn’t do it.

He is also not afraid to make his guests shine — to take a back seat. To engage in conversation without trying to score points with a cheap laugh. Although that graciousness can backfire when at times the viewer might wonder whether it should be that other funny Weekend Update anchor — Amy Poehler — who should be sitting at the desk.

As expected, the set looks like a cut-rate version of The Tonight Show. Same luxurious wood veneer, just less of it.

And no giant chess board of intricately carved New York towers, which is perhaps just as well. If The Tonight Show is Tribeca, Late Night is Brooklyn.

Even Meyers’ desk is high-school sized. But the pint-sized scale is perfectly in keeping with a more low-key show that can also afford to be more experimental, skewing to a younger demographic.

One casting gem is the addition of comedian Fred Armisen (SNL, Portlandia) as band leader. The banter between the two is funny and sharp. When questioned about his projects, Armisen improvises that he’s creating a series for the History Channel. “It’s called Recent History. It only goes back the past hour or so . . . very serious. Very dry.”

So far the late-night empire of Canadian Lorne Michaels, who is the executive producer of both shows, is holding firm. Fallon debuted to an average audience of 8.5 million viewers in the first week, the largest in more than a decade, thanks to the lead-in of the Olympics. On Monday, the numbers came down for Fallon, but they were still high enough to best the competition from Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman.

That will hopefully give Meyers the cushion needed to become familiar to a new generation of viewers.

And in another shout-out to Toronto, expected guests in his inaugural week include the Toronto Star’s Robyn Doolittle (Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story). Also appearing this week are rapper Kanye West and Girls’ Lena Dunham.

The premiere show wasn’t a home run — but as talk shows like Fallon’s drift more to skits, game playing and trying to launch viral videos, the strength of having a good conversation — with a joke or two thrown in — might be Meyers’ saving grace and something to look forward to as the future of late night unfolds.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com